SAP AMS: the importance of support services.

The power and flexibility of SAP are well known by now and have made it, over the years, one of the best known and most appreciated systems globally, with solutions suitable for any business model and most companies, of any size. In order to be put to good use, however, SAP requires a number of skills and professionalism, especially when issues or unforeseen contingencies of various kinds arise. In this, companies can find support in an SAP AMS (Application Management Services) service, which provides support and maintenance for systems, giving the option of obtaining the necessary services on an outsourced basis.

Focus on your business

Precisely because digital services are also increasingly present and established within companies, the approach is now very similar to that of other specialized supplies: the fact that it is impractical and often uneconomical to have on staff every skill and every specialization necessary for proper operation is now an established fact. SAP Services for application management can take care of routine and non-routine management, support and generally everything that is needed for applications and infrastructure to function properly, without forcing the company to source on the market or have internally all the skill set needed to manage each component. This makes it possible to reduce the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and provide a more direct and effective measurable ROI, since the cost item for managing applications becomes clear and defined and does not risk being scattered or difficult to calculate as in the case of using internal resources.

On the other hand, in apparent contradiction, a very strong standardization effort by manufacturers (foremost among them SAP) has made more “pushy” and destructive customizations less and less frequent, favoring, at least at the core and lower levels, a standardization of products.

Two favorable factors for the emergence of AMS services on SAP, enabling companies to embrace all the benefits of digital transformation, even the most innovative ones, while managing to keep costs under control.

SAP application support: how does it work?

Good AMS service is based on two basic “pillars”: support and maintenance. Support in fact includes both contingent support services and preventive interventions aimed at early resolution of problems that can turn into worse criticalities if neglected. Today it can be done both in-person and remotely, for example through the use of AMS Software for more routine interventions. Alongside service, maintenance service is essential. Both for periodic monitoring of the status of systems and for routine management (e.g., upgrades for on premises systems or review of configurations for those in the Cloud) and for the introduction of new services or features.

Indeed, with a view to continuous improvement, a good AMS service independently and proactively proposes new features, additional services, and generally anything that can help the client company use SAP software more and more effectively and productively.

Customization is another key factor. AMS Services can be tailored to meet a company’s unique needs and challenges. In addition, in the SAP ecosystem, the integration of AI and machine learning provides advanced capabilities such as predictive maintenance and automated ticket management.

The advantages of AMS over SAP

When it comes to centralization of services, the benefits are always related to the increased specialization of resources and the ability to distribute resources in a more optimized way. Let’s look at the main ones.

• Reducing costs is the first and most obvious one: relying on outsourcing services allows you to better control spending, avoiding the risk associated with finding resources and expertise on the open market, or having to resort to in-house training.
• Theobservation of best practices is another considerable advantage. These in fact can typically be put into practice only against certified and experienced expertise. This allows for better quality processes, systems and procedures.
• Quality of solutions and agility of implementation: it is no mystery that IT and technical teams in general, when in-house, are often overwhelmed by day-to-day management issues that leave little room for innovation and continuous improvement of implemented solutions. Leaning on an external team allows them to overcome this pattern and have continuously innovating systems and services at their disposal.
• Staff specialization is another very important benefit. Normally companies, if not extremely structured, have cross-functional figures within the IT department who, inevitably, have a more general background on many different topics. AMS services, for their part, rely on specialists with extremely vertical skills who can best address any need or issue.